[ noun ] brilliant and showy technical skill <noun.cognition> in a final bravura the ballerina appeared to be floating in waterthe music ends with a display of bravura
Bravura \Bra*vu"ra\, n. [It., (properly) bravery, spirit, from bravo. See {Brave}.] (Mus.) A florid, brilliant style of music, written for effect, to show the range and flexibility of a singer's voice, or the technical force and skill of a performer; virtuoso music.
{Aria di bravura}[It.], a florid air demanding brilliant execution.
And "Richard III," graced by the flamboyantly devilish performance of Andrew Jarvis in the title role, works quite well with its business-suited politicians and bravura press-conference ending.
Tharp, herself a virtuoso with a pugnacious and Cagney-ish air to her most daring feats, loves bravura.
He brings to it now a grandeur of scale - the Wells stage is far, far too small for him - and a bravura which are the stuff of legend.
And since Guarnieri's tone was deliberately subdued (as opposed to the brilliant bravura of Ilaria Occhini as the mettlesome Marchesa), the confrontations were unequal. The title role was not the protagonist's.
Two male dancers are given big solos, but their material is blandly academic in its bravura, as if it were designed to pass a flamenco dance exam (grade 8).
"Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux," a bravura showpiece for a pair of star dancers, fared poorly.
The first demands not only technical bravura but the ability to apply it to the ends of musical eloquence.
The most applause went to Nina Ananiashvili and Aleksei Fadeyechev in the bravura "Grand Pas" from "Don Quixote," choreographed by Alexander Gorsky.
The company is crammed with tremendous dancers, young talents nipping at the heels of the etoiles, as I noted in programmes devoted to Jeunes danseurs and bravura accounts of Etudes and Le Palais de cristal.
Clear textures, quickly passing imagery, a certain modesty of means - no bravura; no rodomontade - are the keynotes to the work.
Some of the bravura tricks fell apart.
The "Casilda Fantasie," a bravura work by two 19th-century musicians based on an obscure opera by a duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, plodded along relentlessly.
"There certainly won't be any dynamic displays of diplomatic bravura that we saw with Nakasone," said one diplomat.
The European elegance, macho bravura and world-weary skepticism of Argentines converged in the great port city.
That vocabulary, while necessarily flavored both by Ms. Plisetskaya's Soviet schooling and her vivid personality, is remarkably conservative, stressing control rather than display, authority rather than bravura.
A little Aussie bravura didn't hurt.
It was bravura performance by Gorbachev, despite his obvious fatigue after four days of summitry, a dash to Minnesota, and a 22-hour spin around the San Francisco area that featured a brief reunion with former President Reagan.
Two days later, choosing resignation rather than defeat, Mrs. Thatcher spat defiance at old foes in a bravura encore in the House of Commons, while Ingham sat forlornly in the gallery, head in hands.
Interspersed with all this is a bravura discussion of the philosophy of mountaineering. For climbers, feminists, psychologists and others this is a must read.
The evening ended with the bravura dancing of Kyra Nichols and Jock Soto in the fourth and fifth campaign of Balanchine's "Stars and Stripes" and the unfurling of the flag.
At a similar event in London this week, Britain's new finance minister accomplished another. Kenneth Clarke's performance at the Mansion House dinner on Tuesday was an equal display of bravura.